The score to Colin Matthews’ Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro describes the play of light and shade in painting. Colin Matthews’ 16-minute work for orchestra, first performed in 1990 at the BBC Proms, explores the balance of different musical elements across its tripartite form: harmony, melodic line and orchestral colour and texture, each spot lit at different times. The first part spotlights a trumpet solo; the second section is a murky scherzo, where melody fragments; a substantial final sequence alternates moments of high drama with more chordal textures, before the two ideas mesh and the music dissolves.

‘Glistening melodic lines unfurl between slabs of machine-like texture, layers pile up and topple over to reveal a set of fresh perspectives…intensely concentrated and richly allusive.’ Financial Times (Andrew Clements), 10 August 1990